


when the chips are down

by orpheus_under_starlight



Series: to walk alongside you [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd Needs a Hug, During Timeskip (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, Gen, Mentioned Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Multi, Original Fifth Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Scheming, Twin Byleths, awkward discussions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:14:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23747395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orpheus_under_starlight/pseuds/orpheus_under_starlight
Summary: Edelgard storms Garreg Mach in the pursuit of her ideals, and some things prove to be inevitable.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Series: to walk alongside you [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646458
Comments: 2
Kudos: 80





	when the chips are down

Byleth falls.

And falls. And falls. And  _ falls. _

_ Brother,  _ she screams out into the void, unsure of whether or not he’s present.  _ Tell Claude I’m alive—tell him to find me— _

The abyss takes her, darker than Zahras, and it comes so fast she doesn’t have time to think.

-

“She’s here,” Byleth is saying, his brows furrowed. “I know she is.”

“Did you  _ see _ her?” Jeralt asks sharply. 

Claude looks between the two men, feeling struck by the oddity of this situation. They don’t have much time to find his Byleth. Even with the cover of night, the aftermath of the battle for Garreg Mach hasn’t quite settled yet—and according to Dimitri’s Byleth, his Byleth had, before going silent, insisted that he tell Claude of her survival.

“No,” Byleth says. “I heard her.”

“Kid, I’m going to need you to explain as much as you have the words to. I figure Rhea did this, but...”

He believes her. He doesn’t need any help for that. When she and her brother returned to the Golden Deer (plus Dimitri, and Dedue, the only remaining members of the Blue Lions to have refrained from joining Claude's Byleth) and struck Solon down, he’s pretty sure he started believing in a separate religion from the stars of his childhood and the Seirosian faith, and its central figure goes by Teach.

What he doesn’t know is why she would call out for him in what may have very well been her last moments.

_ That’s _ a thought that sets something cold in his stomach and makes his mind go very still and quiet. Jeralt and Byleth are having an intent discussion in low voices; back at the makeshift camp they set up, Dedue is keeping Dimitri restrained (and, if necessary, knocked out cold) until they can figure out how to get him to agree to not rush into battle with a gored eye and too many other wounds. 

Something in the ruined lake glints, catching his attention. He has to squint to see it—the moonlight isn’t incredibly bright, the only reason they even dared to come and look for her—it’s green, whatever it is, it’s—

—it’s Teach’s hair. It’s Teach, her face just barely floating in the water, wet hair fanned out around her like a halo.

Almost before he knows it, he’s diving into the water and booking it for her. Half a childhood spent in Almyra’s oceans has rendered him a fairly powerful swimmer; he uses that to his advantage, gathering her onto his back and looping her arms around him, holding her hands to his chest with one hand. Her chest is rising and falling against him and all he can think is  _ whoever’s out there, up there, down there, whatever—thank you, thank you, thank you. _

He’s close to the shore when Byleth wades in—as quietly as possible, under the circumstances—and helps him to shore.

“Thanks,” Claude says, breathing hard. She’s still in her armor, and he hadn’t thought to take his off before dashing in to save the day. It’s not like him.

But Teach... does things to him. Makes him think he can be more than he ever dreamed he’d be, even with all his lofty ideals and visions for the world.

“I’ll carry her.” Before Claude can make any noise of protest, Jeralt is lifting Teach off him and cradling her in his arms; he puts a few fingers over her pulse. In that moment, several strange looks cross his face that Claude only manages to identify when he forcibly smooths it out. Shock, relief, exhaustion—apprehension. “She’s alive. But... you can feel it, can’t you? The magical energy around her.”

Byleth pauses in the process of pulling Claude to his feet. “It will come to envelop me too, Father.”

O _ kay. _ That’s something that needs to be unpacked.

“I’ve never felt anything like this,” Claude muses, brows furrowed, finding that when he stretches out with his much-unused magic he can sense something a Seirosian would probably call profane. The closest he’s gotten is the magical backlash they all felt when Teach sliced her way out of that dark prison Solon tried to put her in. This feels... gentler, almost, a similar outworking of the same power, a strain of music playing in harmony, with the energy around her now taking the higher crescendo. 

It's powerful. Moreso than anything has any right to be.

“Damn. If we’d kept track of one of your friends—someone with magic training, a healer...”

“I know why. She exhausted herself,” Byleth says, and it’s probably the most he’s ever said in such a short period. He walks toward her and their father, his gait a little unsteady, and leans against his father’s shoulder, looking down at Teach. “The power we have... the power of a dead god... she was trying to keep everyone alive. Even the power of a god is only so exhaustible. Our bodies... weren’t meant to handle the strain...”

He breaks into a massive yawn.

“Hey, now, friend, let’s not fall asleep just yet,” Claude says hastily. He has just about ten million questions about what Byleth just said, but... if he has to lug Teach’s brother back to camp, he’s not sure they’d last the night without being found by Edelgard’s reinforcements. “Come on. We’d better clear out of here before Edelgard’s patrols come looking for Teach—once we get to a safe place, we can relax and strategize a bit. Figure out what to do next. Especially about Dimitri.”

Byleth snaps to attention at that. “Right. Father—”

“I understand, kid. Come on. We’re burning moonlight.”

-

Life for the next week or so is a blur. Yuri smuggles them supplies before Abyss locks down to protect itself (”Good luck,” he’d said, chuckling without any humor, and it was the first time Claude almost liked him as a person), and those supplies see Claude’s little party to Derdriu. 

The Kingdom thinks Dimitri is dead. Claude sends messengers to the lords of its territories, assuring them that Dimitri is alive, but little more than that. It won’t be the most convincing thing, he knows. No proof? No details? He’d certainly be hard-pressed to believe it if he wasn’t currently keeping watch over the man via a glorified house arrest in Riegan Manor. But with him being the only one able to deliver the official message, and with his status in Fodlan on the whole, he knows it will only inspire more questions than answers.

Dimitri is teetering on a knife’s edge, really. His physical wounds are second to the mental ones. Only the fact that Sylvain—formerly of the Blue Lions, and Claude guesses now formerly of the Golden Deer as well—snuck away from the fighting in the Kingdom and came to be with him and Dedue in Derdriu, unnoticed in all the chaos Edelgard has instigated with the war she’s waging, has kept him from charging off on a crusade for the Adrestian Emperor’s head.

Even Claude isn’t sure what to do about it. Dimitri is incapacitated when his country needs him most, cooling his heels in a holding cell for his own good. Ideally, he’d like to rally the Kingdom and the Alliance together; he can see the future unfurling in his mind’s eye, a combined resistance force against the Empire, keeping Edelgard from her dominion. But a resistance force needs a unifying factor.

The Knights of Seiros have scattered to the four cardinal winds. Reports are still coming in about the fallout of the last battle, but the first and most urgent one had been from Hanneman of all people, addressed to him as the leader of the Golden Deer—a formal recognition of the graduation of every student in the house, without pomp and ceremony, but with a prayer for their wellbeing, and finally a coded postscript that he was surprised to find incorporated until he realized it was in Shamir’s handwriting, not Hanneman’s.

_ P.S.—Going to look for Rhea. Tell the Professor, if you find her. _

So. The Knights can’t do it; the Seirosian faith is going to fracture (at least to a degree) with Rhea missing after the battle. But these are early days. Claude recognizes as much as anyone that he’s getting ahead of himself, iterating probable outcomes like this, but now more than ever all of his tactical ability will be needed to get the Alliance out of this intact, let alone his dreams. 

He leans back in his chair, regards Byleth sleeping on his bed in the uncharted saferoom beneath the Manor, and sighs. “My friend... if you’d like to wake up any time soon, I can’t deny that’d probably be the most helpful thing you could do in this circumstance.”

But he knows she won’t. Her brother, before falling into a deep slumber himself, said that he didn’t know how long they would be asleep—that although they had inherited the power of a goddess, before she had merged with them, she had been long in a deep slumber herself.  _ She _ meaning  _ Sothis, _ and he’s still not sure how to feel about that.

The door creaks. Claude doesn’t move. A pause hangs in the air, and then a heavy sigh rings out. Jeralt sits down in the chair next to him. “You know, when three noble brats came and begged my mercenaries and I for help, I didn’t think it would come to this.”

“To be fair,” Claude says, too tired to play at being afraid of Teach’s father, “neither did I.”

Jeralt smirks. It looks enough like that rare spark of fire Byleth sometimes gets—got—when really evenly matched in a spar that he has to blink to force himself to keep looking in his direction. “And you’re the clever one?”

It takes him a good moment to realize he’s being treated like an adult, and not a troublesome student that noses around Byleth a bit too much for Jeralt’s liking. He thinks his half-smile might have some truth in it. “That’s what they say, at least.”

“I don’t envy you. You’re about to go through hell.” The companionable clap on the shoulder doesn’t entirely take him by surprise, either. Jeralt’s palm is heavy, and calloused; in a way, it reminds him of his own father, whose hands are large and whose body has been long seasoned by battle. 

He hums, noncommittal. Is he looking forward to the next—however long this will take? No. But as unpleasant as it’s going to be, something deep inside him holds to an indefatigable truth he’s more than willing to stake his life on.

_ You and I will meet again. _

However long it takes her, Byleth is going to wake up. 

And when she does? He’ll be ready.

“What will you do?” Claude asks, because he doesn’t think assuming anything of Jeralt is the best idea in the world, even if he can guess. 

The question earns him an unimpressed snort. “Well, seeing as both of my children are in a magical sleep, it’s probably in my best interests to do some research. See if I can’t find a way to wake them. I had so much to tell them... but then this happened.”

“Speaking of,” he says, “I... had some questions about that.”

“Oh?” 

There’s a mild warning in there. Not exactly comforting. But he has to know—has to understand. Not only to plan for the future, but to know how to protect the twins best until they’re ready to come back to the world of the living. “Yes. I realize we both count as high profile targets, and that might make what I have to ask a less than appealing prospect, but.” He swallows. He knows the truth is likely the best bet. “...I care about Byleth.”

“Do you.” Humor, but mostly sternness.

“Yes,” Claude says, opting to look him in the eye. “I have for some time, now. She’s my friend, not just my Professor. And I don’t know her brother as well as I do her, but I won’t lie to you, Captain. I consider him a friend as well. And in our brief time together, I’ve come to rely on your daughter.”

Jeralt sighs, then, leaning back, still watching him with a hard eye. “Yeah, I’ve noticed. Not too sure how much I like it. Don’t get me wrong,” he says, holding up a hand when Claude tenses despite himself. “You might be a scheming little bastard, but you’ve been good for her. And with the outcome of this mess, I actually find myself glad you’re a decent man.”

“Thank... you?” Claude says, eyebrows raised.

“Don’t get used to it. Anyways, the kids have the right to tell their own story. If they only knew it.” Jeralt smirks. “So I’m going to trust you, and we’ll see where that takes us. I’m going on a long journey, and I have some old friends to check up on. Like your mother.”

Claude isn’t truly shocked often in his life.  _ “What?” _

It comes out sharp, almost angry, completely shatters the usual image he tries to put on. Jeralt’s smirk actually becomes a grin. “What, she never told you the stories? Kid, I helped put your father on the throne. You think I wouldn’t recognize you on sight? The only part of you that isn’t her spitting image is the hair.”

“...No, I wasn’t aware,” he manages, and it almost sounds evenhanded. “And hey. You got a shock out of me, but I’m not fully convinced. My mother left Fodlan behind. Took on another name. If you actually know her, you know that much.”

“Claudia, wasn’t it?” Jeralt muses. “Curious coincidence, that.”

“Right. Okay. Alright.” Claude puts his head in his hands. He's not done  _ just _ yet, but--“Tell me her second alias.”

Jeralt smirks. “The Golden Dragon of Almyra. Satisfied? Listen well, von Riegan. Someone has to be able to pass this onto them if I don’t survive.”

For once, Claude does most of the listening.


End file.
